"More than 100,000 applications have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace and new content is currently being added at the rate of 313 applications per day. At the time of writing, 100,145 applications have been published. Of these, 26,493 were added in the last three months and 9,391 were added in the last month. These applications come from just over 23,825 different publishers." Is there anybody out there who still places any value on these numbers, whether they be for Android, iOS, or WP7? Considering virtually all Android, iOS, and WP7 applications are useless, ugly, buggy crap (with only a few being somewhat tolerable - never actually good, because good software doesn't exist), I honestly don't really care. But hey, another check mark on the list of PR talking points.

"The user base of course does matter to developers, it's quite scary to think you could sell an app at 99 cents to all users (which you have zero chance of doing) and still not be *that* rich."

It's a painful admission, but it's looking like the glut of developers are scrounging for smaller and smaller pieces of the pie, the largest swaths of which only going to a small but immensely rich group at the top. This seems exceedingly similar to the music industry, where over half the tracks for sale don't get a single download. I'm really upset that I can't find the full source anymore.

http://blog.jinni.com/2009/01/can-we-discover-value-in-the-long-tai...
"Reporting on a study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a recent article in the Times Online claims that the long tail theory has been contradicted. The study found that “more than 10 million of the 13 million [music] tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Page
^ Patrick Foster (December 22, 2008). "Long Tail theory contradicted as study reveals 10m digital music tracks unsold: Digital sales figures dent niche market theory". The Times. "However, a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits. They found that, for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks. For albums, the figures were even more stark. Of the 1.23 million available, only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year.".

http://williamjudd.com/2010/11/15/the-long-tail/
"researchers Will Page and Andrew Bud in 2008 showed that 80% of single sales came from just 52,000 tracks, suggesting an incredibly thin Long Tail. The same study also showed 85% of albums sold online didn’t sell a single copy."

The Times links are broken, it could be because they're behind paywalls?